I RECENTLY RECEIVED A DONATION REQUEST AND PETITION FROM NARAL or National Abortion Rights Action League and now the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, but otherwise known as ProChoice America, a more politically correct name. Regardless of all of those names, I am going to sign their petitions and donate a little bit.

First, you need to know, I do not support abortion; when there is an unwanted pregnancy I truly wish the mother and father (if known) would carry it to term and put it up for adoption. But, and this is a huge 'but', I support even more, the woman's individual right to chose her own fate immediately upon germination. I am one of those who think she loses the God-given right (however you want to define God) to control her body and what is going on inside it only at the point where the fetus becomes viable and is truly a living being, if removed from the mother.

What I intend on doing with this donation request is write a letter to the three honorable gentlemen named in the title of this hub and send it with my reply to NARAL. I am doing this because the petition they are asking me to sign is a short plea to each that states:

"I am outraged that a woman's right to choose is under constant attack. I urge you to support comprehensive family-planning initiatives and legislation that protects a woman's right to choose.

Please do everything in your power to ensure that abortion care remains safe and legal in this country."

This letter, along with thousands of others, I presume, will be hand-delivered to each Congressman. What I hope NARAL will do is attach my letter to their letter as well for as you all know, writing Congressmen and Presidents is basically a waste of time.

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TED YOHO, R-FL 3RD DISTRICT | Source

The Letter

The Honorable Ted Yoho

511 Cannon House Office Building

United States House of Representatives

Washington DC 20515

Dear Representative:

I am adding this personal letter to NARAL's petition to emphasize my support for their initiatives, although I suspect my reasoning may be different from theirs. I oppose abortion and fervently wish mothers with unwanted pregnancies would carry unwanted fetuses to full-term and place their babies up for adoption or other such remedy, But, in concert with the Supreme Court, until such time as the fetus becomes a viable human being, the rights of a fetus cannot destroy one of the fundamental principles upon which this country was founded ... the natural right to individual liberty. In this case, of course, we are talking about the mother's right to choose what to do with her own body until such time there is a viable human being living inside her, at which point she loses that natural right.

After my retirement from military service in 2007 (National Guard) and as a Civil Servant from across the river in 2008 from the Department of Defense, I have been studying and writing about American history; mostly American political history focusing on why and how we, as a country, got to be here and what we have done with this gift we were given. Based on that, I can tell you I am a liberal of the same mold as such personages as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. These great men, as you well know, rejected the conservative ideas of the time popularized by such men as Edmund Burke and a little later by Vice President John C. Calhoun. Instead, each in their own way, forged the ideas and theories of natural rights from philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and others into the unique document for which you now serve, the Constitution, a model of liberalism at its finest.

Natural rights as expressed by Locke was “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions". This was rewritten by Thomas Jefferson to read, "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" in the part of the Declaration of Independence we still remember. Finally, this was codified into the Preamble to our Constitution, in my opinion, via the Preamble where the purpose of the Federal government was declared to be to 1) form a Union, 2) establish Justice, 3) insure Tranquility, 4) provide defense, 5) promote Welfare, and 6) secure Liberty for Posterity. Obviously I shortened this quite a bit but I am sure you know it by heart anyway. What I wanted to point out are two things, 1) all the verbs are action verbs and 2) except for "forming a Union" and "providing a defense", it appears to be all about the individual, doesn’t it. But in my reading of history, except for a brief moment in time in the 1860s, it was all about business and property until the 1960s. Is that really what the founders who wrote the Preamble truly had in mind?

From where I sit, considering the 76 years it took to first pass then ratify the 13th Amendment, 131 years to ratify the 19th Amendment, 175 years to pass the Civil Rights Act, and 176 years to pass the Voting Rights Act, Congress should not feel very proud that it has done right by the Preamble as it pertains to American citizens; this, of course, includes all of the efforts to deny a woman's right to choose, a natural right by any measure. I think of the time I spent in Vietnam fighting for an America where only a few years before, 13% of its population were finally guaranteed an "effective" right to vote ... only 107 years after given the theoretical right to vote.

That is the prism I look through when considering individual liberty in America, and I would hope that is the prism you look through as well. A woman's right to control her own body is a sacrosanct natural right! It is no less important a right than a Black not to be a slave or a Blacks or women not to vote, both of which a certain philosophical segment of America fought very hard and very long to make sure didn't happen and fight to this day to reverse now that they have as the 2013 Supreme Court ruling reversing the 1964 Voting Rights Act suggests.

A woman's right to have control over her own body is a God-given, fundamental, natural right that should not be abridged over a centuries old philosophical difference of opinion both inside and outside of religious circles.

Sincerely,

Scott Belford

Keystone Heights, FL

myesoteric.hubpages.com

SENATOR BILL NELSON - D FL | Source

SENATOR MARCO RUBIO - R FL | Source

Editing The Letter

IT IS TOO LONG! A HUNDRED WORDS OR SO need to be takenout so as to get it down to one page, HELP! I know some of you are saying don't send it at all, it is way off the mark, women don't have a fundamental right over their own body; the fetus has taken that right away from her. Unfortunately, I can't help you there, that debate has been going on ever since there has been a Catholic church and I am on the side of the mother until such time their is another viable human life involved.

For those that don't know, Both Senator Rubio and Representative Yoho are pretty far right-wing Republicans, Senator Nelson, on the other hand, is a Democrat, but not that far left. I hope for each to get the same letter and ponder it; I feel this is the best way for it not to end up in the trash heap.

Not said in the letter, but I will say it here. I don't believe most women who choose to terminate their pregnancy chose to get pregnant in the first place. I would wager that in virtually all instances they were forced to have intercourse or got pregnant by accident, carelessness, or just plain stupidity (I saw an interview back in the 1980s where a college student said she couldn't get pregnant if she did standing up); I am not sure in what order.

Having a baby is a complete life altering event, both for the mother, the father, if he is a man and owns up to it, and the baby. The debate about whether a fetus is a human being at conception has been debated, as I said, as long as the Catholic Church around and that is precisely the point ... it is debatable. It is my firm position that so long as there is reasonable doubt that a fetus is an actual living human being, then the mother's inalienable natural rights trump that of the fetus.

Dare I Ask?

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE WHILE THE FETUS IS NOT VIABLE?

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